Coconut Guava Bars

When I think about the things that I bake, there are a lot of flavors that I return to time and time again. I love oats, cinnamon, and anything with ginger. Apples are always great, and hazelnuts are my favorite. But there are some ingredients that I don’t use often, and it isn’t because I don’t like them, but I don’t actively look for recipes with those ingredients. I guess I don’t like pumpkin much, the texture isn’t my thing, so there aren’t many pumpkin recipes here.

This recipe originally called for apricot, which I love but just don’t use very often. Even with this recipe that called for apricot preserves, I knew full well when I saved it that I would try and think of a different sort of preserves to use. I had to figure out what would go well with coconut, and I was at a store with a lot of unusual and international products, and I found guava preserves. Giving this bar a Hawaiian twist sounded great.

This recipe calls for a 9” x 13” pan but gives the option of using a smaller 7” x 11” pan, and that was what I used. It seemed like the bars would be too thin using the larger pan. It was easier to spread the dough in the smaller pan, and my jar of guava preserves was slightly smaller than what the recipe originally called for, so I think it was the right choice. These bars were sturdy and cut beautifully and have a wonderful fruity flavor. They were the perfect choice to remind you of the upcoming spring.

Coconut Guava Bars
¾ cup butter, at room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 egg
½ teaspoon vanilla
1-1/2 cups flour
¼ teaspoon baking powder
1 ⅓ cups coconut
½ cup slivered almonds
1 jar guava preserves
Additional slivered almonds

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a 9” x 13”  or 7” x 11” pan with foil and spray with nonstick cooking spray.

In a large mixer bowl, beat the butter and sugar on medium until light. Add the egg and vanilla and stir to combine. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour and baking powder and then add it to the mixer with the mixer running on low. Stir in the coconut and slivered almonds.

Press 2/3 of the dough into the prepared pan. Top with an even layer of guava preserves. Crumble the remaining 1/3 of the dough over the preserves. Top with additional slivered almonds.

Bake for 30-35 minutes, until golden brown. Allow the cookies to cool completely before cutting into bars.

Recipe adapted from That Skinny Chick Can Bake

Apricot and Pistachio Biscotti

Apricots are an ingredient that I don’t always have on hand, but right now I have a small quantity that I don’t want to go to waste. Mine are already chopped, so that can be limiting, as some recipes call for whole dried apricots and others want them to be chopped. This recipe for biscotti uses a small quantity of chopped dried apricots, and biscotti are usually quick to put together.

The method for assembling biscotti can be different. Since it is a dry cookie, it doesn’t rely on creaming the butter and sugar then adding the flour. You could likely mix them that way and they would still turn out, but this has you add the dry ingredients and mix-ins and then add the eggs and orange juice. I’m not at all a baker who follows fussy recipes, and I follow the given recipe, but I also feel that my baking instincts are pretty strong.

This is a slightly smaller recipe and you make one log of dough instead of two, which is good. It can be hard to shape two pieces of dough into the same size, so you don’t have to worry about that. I roughly follow the size guidelines, but shaping them differently will just need slightly different baking times. I tend to like biscotti that isn’t so dry, so I tend to bake mine a little less, but it purely depends on your taste. My not-quite-so-dry biscotti

Apricot and Pistachio Biscotti
1-1/4 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ cup of pistachios, roughly chopped
½ cup dried apricots, finely chopped
2 eggs, beaten
Juice and zest of half an orange
Additional flour

Heat the oven to 320 degrees. Line a baking sheet with a silicone baking mat.

In a large mixer bowl, combine the flour, sugar, and baking powder and mix on low. Add the chopped pistachios and apricots and stir on low to incorporate. Add the beaten eggs, orange zest and juice and mix until the dough comes together. The dough will be sticky.

Shape the dough into a log about 4 inches wide and 12 inches long. You may need to use additional flour to successfully shape the dough.

Bake for about 15 minutes, until set and a golden crust starts to form. Remove the baking sheet from the oven and allow the biscotti to cool, about 30 minutes.

Reduce the oven temperature to 300 degrees.

Transfer the biscotti to a cutting board and cut into pieces about ½” thick. Place the biscotti, cut side down, on the baking sheet.

Bake for 10 minutes, then turn the biscotti over and bake for an additional 10 minutes. The cookies will be dry. Cool the biscotti completely on a wire rack.

Recipe from Finding Time for Cooking

Apricot Tassies

For Halloween this year, my husband bought some little packages of different snacks to be given to the students in the library. One of the items in the mix were packages of diced apricots. They looked to perfect for me to include them as Halloween candy, so I set the apricots aside and I knew I would be able to use them in a recipe. I occasionally bake with apricots, but not nearly enough!

I love anything made in a mini muffin cup, so when I came across this recipe it wasn’t much of a decision for me to know I was going to make them. They are a simple cream cheese dough base filled with apricot jam, but in this case, you make the apricot jam. The jam is not difficult, just some time simmering on the stove and then adding a handful of ingredients. My jam was chunky, which I didn’t mind, but you could also puree it with an immersion blender if you wanted a smooth texture.

The dough for these cookies is so simple, mainly flour, butter, and cream cheese.  I would add some salt to the dough, as I think it needs it. The original recipe stated that it made four dozen cookies. I made a little over three dozen, but I think I could have used less dough for each cookie. The dough is fairly thick on the bottom, so I would want that to be thinner next time. The flavor of the jam is just wonderful and the chopped apricots were perfect for this recipe.

Apricot Tassies
1 cup chopped dried apricots
water
¼ cup sugar
1 tablespoon butter
¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 tablespoon apple/orange juice

1 ⅓ cups butter, room temperature
8 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
2 ⅔ cups flour
1 teaspoon vanilla

In a medium saucepan, place the apricots and enough water to cover the fruit and come 1 inch above the apricots. Simmer on medium-low for about 20 minutes, until thickened. Stir in the sugar, butter, cinnamon, and juice and continue cooking until the mixture becomes like jam. Place in a separate bowl and refrigerate until chilled.

To make the dough, combine the butter and cream cheese in a large mixer bowl. Beat on medium until incorporated. Add the vanilla and stir to combine. With the mixer running on low, gradually add the flour, mixing until the dough comes together. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for one hour, or longer.

Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Have on hand several mini muffin pans, as this recipe yields between 3-4 dozen tassies.

Shape the dough into 1-1/2 inch balls and place into the mini muffin pans. Using a tart tamper or similar tool, press down the dough and make and indentation in each to make a tart/tassie shape. Fill each cookie with a small amount of the apricot jam.

Bake for 10-14 minutes, until the filling is bubbly and the tassie dough is barely golden. Allow the tassies to cool in the pan for 10 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

Dust with powdered sugar, if desired.

Recipe from Amee’s Savory Dish

Rugelach Bars

Happy Hanukkah to those who celebrate! Hanukkah ends Monday night, so I wanted to post these cookies in advance of the end of the celebration. They do take a little more time, with the chilling of the dough, so it is best not to rush them. I have made rugelach several times, and it honestly can be filled with anything that you’d like, but I kept fairly traditional here, just substituting dried pluots for the dried apricots. I wanted to try something different!

I made the crust for the bars a day in advance. The dough was so crumbly that I wanted to provide lots of time in the refrigerator for it to come together. As I struggle rolling dough out to a specified size, I did a combination of rolling and pressing to get the dough into the pan. Chilling the dough didn’t help at all with the fact that the dough was completely falling apart. Thankfully the filling was no problem and for the top crust I just pieced it together as well as I could. There was no way that I was going to be able to roll it out into any sort of shape.

These get very bubbly while baking, but firm up as they cool. I imagine that if the top crust was more cohesive, then that would be less noticeable, but I will never know! Once baked, the bars are nicely browned on top, but you can see that the top crust isn’t perfect. That’s fine because I did the best I can! I think they look nice, and the filling is wonderful with the chocolate, dried fruit, and nuts. Rugelach can be quite messy to make, but these bars are a little easier.

Rugelach Bars
12 tablespoons butter, cut in pieces
8 ounces cream cheese
2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup pecans, toasted
1 cup chocolate chips
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
3/4 cup dried apricots, finely chopped
Zest of one orange
3 tablespoons light corn syrup
3 tablespoons butter, melted

1 large egg yolk
1 tablespoon water
Additional sugar

In a large mixer bowl, mix the cold butter and cream cheese until soft, but the butter will remain chunky. Add the flour and salt and mix on low until the mixture begins to come together. Remove the dough from the mixer and divide in two halves. Shape each half into a rectangle and wrap with plastic wrap. Refrigerate overnight.

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a 9” x 13” pan with foil and spray the foil with nonstick cooking spray.

In a food processor, pulse the toasted pecans and chocolate chips until finely chopped. Transfer to a bowl and add the sugar, cinnamon, dried apricots, orange zest, corn syrup, and melted butter. Stir with a spatula and set aside.

Shape half of the dough into a rectangle approximately 9” x 13”, approximately the size of your baking pan. Place the dough in the prepared pan, adjusting as needed. Spread the dough with the chocolate/nut filling. Roll the second piece of dough into another 9”x 13” rectangle and place on top of the filling. Mix the egg yolk and water and brush the top of the bars with this mixture and sprinkle with sugar.

Bake for about 35 minutes, until golden. Cool completely before cutting into bars. 

Recipe from Joy of Baking

Apricot Oatmeal Bars

As we progress to fall weather, I have to say that our weather here in the Seattle area changed very quickly. We went from warm to smoky and now it’s rainy. Here, the rainy season officially starts on October 1, and that’s pretty soon! It’s hard to go from one extreme to another, and inevitably there will be some flooding, but I am glad to get back to cooler, and yes, rainy weather.

This bar seems a little summery to me, with the apricot preserves, but you can make it what you want it to be. You could use any type of preserves, which would dramatically change the nature of the bars. You could even use mincemeat if you wanted these to be for Christmas! I used apricot (and peach, I think) preserves as that was close to the original. I heated my preserves in the microwave for about 30 seconds, as that makes it much easier to spread.

Overall, I didn’t change much in the original recipe, but I did use the food processor instead of cutting in the butter by hand. I’m never very successful when I try to do that, and I feel like the food processor accomplishes the same task and is so much easier. These came together so quickly it was ridiculous, as I think I was done making the dough and assembling in the time it took to make my bagel and tea that I have for breakfast! They are quite crumbly, so make sure they are completely cool before cutting into bars. Thankfully they are less crumbly when cut, and I don’t know how such a simple cookie can be so tasty and wonderful!

Apricot Oatmeal Bars
½ cup packed brown sugar
¼ teaspoon baking soda
1¼ cups rolled oats
¾ cup flour
½ cup butter, cut into pieces
1 cup apricot preserves

Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Line an 8” square baking pan with foil and spray the foil with nonstick cooking spray.

In a large food processor, combine the brown sugar, baking soda, oats, and flour. Pulse to combine. Cut the butter into pieces and add to the food processor. Process the butter in the mixture, using about 20-25 on/off pulses, until the mixture is crumbly. Press two cups of the mixture into the bottom of the prepared pan. 

Top the crumb mixture with the apricot preserves, carefully spreading the preserves almost to the edge of the pan. Top with the remaining crumb mixture.

Bake for about 30 minutes, until the bars begin to brown. Allow to cool completely before removing from the pan and cutting into squares.

Recipe from Mom Endeavors

Sacher Torte Cookies

It’s been nothing but rain here and it’s so dreary. Don’t get me wrong, I’m from this area and I don’t mind the weather normally, but our current rain is just too much. The normal trickle of a stream by my house has turned into a raging river and there has been a landslide near my house. It’s still supposed to rain but I am hopeful for a little less rain soon.

Figuring out this week’s cookies, I knew I would need to pick up a couple of ingredients. I went to the store, as I needed some other items, and luckily I was able to get the pudding mix and preserves that I needed. I’m not sure if it is the rain or not, but the jam aisle at my store was nearly wiped clean. Do people eat PB&J when it’s rainy? I have no idea.

This cookie started out as a thumbprint cookie, but I don’t like thumbprints where the filling is uncooked preserves. A Sacher Torte traditionally does have an apricot filling, but I wanted to see how it worked with adding the preserves to the cookies, making a chocolate/apricot bite. These cookies don’t contain sugar, other than what is in the pudding and preserves, so they are not super sweet. I was worried that the preserves would make the dough too soft, but they were fine. I like the crunch of the sugar and flavor of the preserves is hard to pinpoint, but these cookies are great!

Sacher Torte Cookies

1 cup butter, room temperature

3.9 ounces package instant chocolate pudding

1 egg

2 cups flour

½ cup apricot preserves

Sugar

1/3 cup semisweet chocolate chips

2 teaspoons vegetable shortening

Heat oven to 325 degrees. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

In a large mixer bowl, beat the butter and pudding mix on medium until light. Add the egg and stir to incorporate. With the mixer running on low, gradually add the flour and mix until just incorporated. Stir in the preserves.

Shape the dough into balls and roll in sugar. Place on the prepared baking sheets.

Bake for 15-18 minutes, until set. Cool on the baking sheets for 5 minutes and then remove to a wire rack to cool completely.

Melt the chocolate and vegetable shortening in the microwave, heating in 30 second increments. Once smooth, drizzle over the cookies.

Recipe from Audrey Thibodeau, Taste of Home

Apricot White Chocolate Cookies

I am starting to think of cookies that are better reflections of spring. I don’t frequently bake with dried apricots, and I came across this recipe and thought it would be great. Ages ago, I had a favorite Pillsbury Bake Off recipe that was a bar cookies with apricots. I should look for that recipe and make those again, as they were great.

This recipe combines apricots, white chocolate chips, and sliced almonds. The original recipe had you soak the apricots in hot water to soften them, but the apricots I had were fresh out of the package and I didn’t feel the need to soften them. I don’t reconstitute other types of dried fruit-- well, except for the dried fruits used in the Christmas cake, which are soaked on booze. 

The recipe here is a half recipe, which still makes three dozen cookies. My dough was a little dry, so I ended up adding an extra egg yolk to make sure the dough would hold together. That seemed to do the job, and the cookies baked up perfectly. I have to admit that I wasn’t super excited to make these cookies, but I really like them! The apricot chunks with sweet white chocolate and the slight crunch of the sliced almonds are perfect together. 

Apricot White Chocolate Cookies

1/2 cup butter, room temperature

1/4 cup sugar

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 cups flour

¼ teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1 cup chopped dried apricots

1 cup white chocolate chips

1/2 cup sliced almonds

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

In a large mixer bowl, combine the butter, sugar, and brown sugar. Beat on medium until smooth. Add the egg and vanilla and stir to combine. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder. With the mixer running on low, gradually add the flour mixture. Stir in the apricots, white chocolate chips, and sliced almonds.

Scoop the dough using a medium cookie scoop, using about 1-1/2 tablespoons of dough per cookie.

Bake for 12-14 minutes, until cookies are set and lightly browned along the edges. Allow the cookie to cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

Recipe from Can’t Stay out of the Kitchen